1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a double-sided printing system, a program recording medium for a double-sided printing system and a method of distributing a printed matter printed making use of a double-sided printing system, and more particularly to a double-sided printing system which can combine a plurality of documents arbitrarily prepared using different applications to effect double-sided printing, and a recording medium on which a program for a double-sided printing system of the type mentioned is recorded as well as a method of distributing printed matters printed making use of the double-sided printing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in order to produce a material composed of paper sheets printed on both sides or faces thereof from a document prepared by a predetermined application, either all pages of the document are printed by single-sided printing first and then a copying machine is used to effect double-sided printing using the single-sided printed pages or one side or face of each paper sheet is first printed taking its page layout into consideration and then the reverse side or face of each sheet is printed to achieve double-sided printing.
However, such editing operation is performed manually and is cumbersome. Thus, a double-sided printing system which is improved in this regard is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 129566/1999. In the double-sided printing system, data of odd-numbered pages of different document files are printed such that the last page of a preceding file and the top page of a following file are outputted to the same paper sheet by invalidating an output of an initialization command to be inserted between document files or stopping outputting of such an initialization command.
The double-sided printing system of the document mentioned above, however, is used to edit data so that the date may form a document of a single application. In this instance, the double-sided printing function is effective only with a document prepared by a single kind of application. Thus, the double-sided printing system is disadvantageous in that it cannot effect double-sided printing of a combination of documents prepared by a plurality of applications.